Comments

Ok, this one has me a little confused. Aaron puts out the "number crunching" article for Week 9 saying Jamaal Charles is primed for some big runs against Oakland and then immediately after that, this article comes out and Charles is nowhere to be found on the Favorable Matchups table. Was he omitted for some reason or are we saying he's not going to have enough big runs to be as fantasy valuable as Shonn Greene this week?

If you just skimmed the article this week and went straight to the favorable/unfavorable lists in the sidebar, you missed the fact that the lists this week are cumulative for matchups in the coming 5 weeks: "We've looked through the schedules for each team in the league from Weeks 10-14 (assuming you won't be able to finish a deal by Week 9) and found those teams with the best and worst fantasy matchups over the timeframe. Using our advanced statistics at Football Outsiders, we'll help fill you in on the players you'll want to target before your fellow owners realize they're primed for big games. Of course, we'll also note those players who are likely to underperform over the next few weeks."

To me, that's still ambiguous. I know the top section addresses the remainder of the season, but halfway through (the part that you undoubtedly read), it says, "Meanwhile, if you're more focused on the short term, here are this week's best and worst matchups," which seem to correspond to the tables. Are you sure the tables aren't for *this week* only?

Was he omitted for some reason or are we saying he's not going to have enough big runs to be as fantasy valuable as Shonn Greene this week?

I think the answer is this: he was omitted because his matchup is not 5% more favorbale than an average matchup, but that doesn't mean he will be less valuable than Shonn Greene (who is +10%). If in an average week you'd expect Charles to get 10 points and Greene to get 6, I think this chart is saying (implicitly) that the expectation for Charles this week is somewhere between 9.5 and 10.5, while the expectation for Greene is 6.6. If the players were equal to begin with, you'd start Greene, but since they're not, you still start Charles.

Makes perfect sense. Ultimately, they should just rank each player for the week instead of using their previous n weeks as a baseline but I guess if you have enough time on your hands to paste the info into a spreadsheet you can work it out on your own.